As a background: Some years ago, at one particular event where I was a keynote speaker, I was asked to speak about community. (It happened to be the Pagan community; but I think we’ve since learned that this applies to more kinds of communities than we’d admit.
I thought I’d take the slightly satirical stance that I was against community. (Because I felt it was the last thing anyone expected; and I felt I had some sincere points I wanted to make.)
I’ve edited this a bit.
It still speaks, quite specifically, to the Pagan community. I thought about pulling that segment out and speaking of communities in general; but then I thought I’d deliver it as it was. If you’re Pagan, it might speak to you directly; if you’re not Pagan, it might still speak to you directly, with one or two peculiar idiosyncrasies.
__________
Community: I’m against it.
Okay, that’s not actually (entirely) true. I don’t know if there are a lot of speakers brought in to speak of the joys of disunity, and I suppose I oughtn’t try to start that trend. But I have to admit: the word “community” bothers me.
That’s not because it’s a bad word, but because it’s a word we use much too cheaply and much too often. It’s like the word “communication” in relationships. I am fairly sure that you’ll approximately never, ever find someone whose relationship advice is “Hey, you guys need to communicate a lot less!” The challenge is, frequent-but empty usage really hurts our ability to actually do something useful with an idea.
I have known some amazing Pagan scholars. I have seen some incredible Pagan teachers and leaders and musicians. And I’m not any of those things. I’m just a Pagan dedicated to building communities for people — usually unusual people. And that’s why I’m here — as I’ve heard rumour that some of you might possibly be unusual people.
But I have an advantage. I throw parties. That is, I make festivals. And festivals form communities around a common purpose of joy. They’re also fairly clearly-defined: you buy your ticket, and you have an attendee experience. You can participate more or less if you want to. But unless you’re at Sleep No More or some other interactive experience, you, as an attendee, don’t have to do more than you desire.
Those are highly chosen communities. They’re opt-in.
And when we speak of the Pagan community — and we often do that, we speak of one Pagan community, as if that was an apt description for our incredibly diverse band of incredibly disparate humans— when we talk about it, we usually describe it in one of two ways: As the place which encompasses all Pagans, such that, like it or not, you’re lumped into that category…
…or as a place you should be a part of, and if you’re not, why not? Are you too good for us?
But we’ve got so, so many reasons to run like Hell when someone says “community”.
I had the honor of seeing one of the last lectures Isaac Bonewits gave, and he made his now-famous point that Paganism should not define itself as “not Judeo-Christianity” — that we shouldn’t set up a false binary of “Jehovah worshippers on one side, and us on the other”. But it’s not saying anything controversial to note that, when we speak of religious community in America, we tend to mean those religions — and that’s a wound for more than a few of us. Many of us fled those communities, or have been attacked or hurt by those communities. To some extent, that’s the “religious community” we know. It doesn’t really tend to give one the warm fuzzies on the subject of community building.
Some of us were called to Paganism, some of us were born to it, some of us found it. Most of us have had the experience of being outsiders in a country which barely acknowledges what we do. I recall a friend of mine who was working at an art booth at a Renaissance Faire, and some of the art featured pentagrams. A woman came up to her and said, “Why do you have that Satanic symbol?!?” My friend attempted to explain that the symbol wasn’t a Satanic one. She cast around for examples, and — this being some years ago — she picked a popular Sheriff of the time: Walker, Texas Ranger. She explained that this shape was just like the one on Chuck Norris’ badge.
The patron paused for a moment and said, “Wow. I had no idea that Chuck Norris was Satanic.”
We are surrounded by communities, and they don’t always welcome us with open arms. They haven’t always been our friends. They haven’t always made us feel optimistic about being part of any kind of community.
And let’s be honest — lots of us are drawn to the exact opposite of communities. There are a lot of solitary Pagan practitioners —(and when I was giving this talk, I pointed out that, even at a festival, a number of those in the audience were solitaries, who ventured to communal events only rarely). Some of us like being hermits; some of us have practices which are not meant to be shared; some of us simply feel better by ourselves than with a crowd.
And to come back a bit to one of the reasons that I, in particular, am here — it may shock you, but I actually have a theory that some people present, yes, right here, today…rather like being unusual, outside of normal, and different from societal expectation.
“Nonconformist” is a word that’s thrown about in much the same manner as “community” or “communication”, but it’s still descriptive of many of us. We’re nonconformists. We often seek to _avoid_ being part of groups. To quote the movie Mystery Men: “Tonight, the lone wolf…um…rides…alone.”
And then you have the question of “What community, exactly, am I joining?” Are we joining together as a political block? I’d like to think that’s a thing we can and will do, when we’re directly threatened. But honestly, that’s pretty much the very bottom of the barrel, as far as community goes: “When something’s actively going to hurt you and people like you, and you have a specific way to stand up to it, you stand up to it”.
[A note from my 2019 self: Even that was too much to ask, sadly.]
We talk about supporting the community as if it were just flipping a switch from ‘I don’t support’ to ‘I do support’. But in reality, there’s a big, complicated Pagan universe out there, and the issues involved are sometimes incredibly complex. I know a lot of people who feel that Pagan folk ought to be a united voting block for progressive causes. I think many Paganfolk, especially around here, might agree with that. But damn, we’d sure be erasing the very real and extant Republican Pagan voters.
If we’re a community, how do we decide who our leaders are? How do we decide what issues to support? How do we figure out what “the community” is going to support?
We don’t have great answers. How could we? And that’s part of why “the community” isn’t quite as clear-cut “positive” as we’d like to think — it’s not necessarily got solutions to a lot of its challenges.
That being said…
…if we’re not fully sure about community, that doesn’t mean that we should actually be a bunch of warring city-states.
I’ve heard a lot of calls for peace and an end to politicking, and I think that some of those calls, especially when delivered by a speaker, tend to look like this: “I’m up here on this podium, you’re down there, I’m saying a bunch of words about things that aren’t a part of my life, telling you what to do.” I think it’s easy to make a bold speech, hard to seek out ways to work on our challenges.
For myself, I say this: I really do see a day when there’s some sort of united Pagan organization which curtails infighting. I see it growing and becoming powerful. And then I see it conquering and crushing all of the various warring city states and declaring itself Emperor. I mean, that’s what I’d do.
In all seriousness, if you’re engaged in a battle which others see as political, I imagine you’re already aware of the perceptions of some people that Pagans shouldn’t fight each other. I also think that if you have the strong belief that you need to fight, you’re going to hear “Don’t fight with each other” as being the sort of thing a parent says to an unruly child, and since you’re not an unruly child, you’ll ignore it.
I’ll say this: If you have that strong will to fight, you probably don’t want to lose. I’m just going to remind you of your own self-interest: all fights have casualties. Don’t ask “Is this argument worth fighting for?” but rather “Is this what I get out of this argument going to be some improvement in that which I want to change, or is it just an expenditure of time and energy which doesn’t go after the real antagonists in this equation?”
Or, more succinctly, do we now value ideological purity over making actual change?
This is not a call for community. I think you’ve had calls for community before, and made decisions based on a number of personal factors, and I don’t blame you. Rather than a general call for community, I’m going to say this:
Let’s recognize that our community is sometimes full of fragility. You don’t need to throw yourself into the community to make it stronger. There are lots of small things you can do. You can make it a point to frequent Pagan-run businesses, both in the physical world and online, even if those businesses aren’t your brand of Paganism. If you’re active on social media, please don’t share every single Pagan cause you see — it increases the ratio of noise to signal and just drowns itself out — but absolutely, absolutely look for Pagan causes which seem worthy to you, and give them help. A like or a share is, famously, just a few clicks, but your clicks can be valuable. Choose them well.
Let’s face it: having a Pagan community of any sort has been a deeply shifting idea since before I was born. I don’t know that any of us can predict quite where we, as Pagans, will be in ten years; so much has changed even since I became Pagan twenty years ago; so much has changed from where we were ten years ago. Part of why we have difficulty creating Pagan community is that it’s a moving target.
We don’t know what that community will become. But perhaps we can agree, for now, that we’re more interested in finding out what it will be together, rather than apart. Perhaps we can speak about that community in ways which ask what it might be, rather than trying to impose an ultimate will on what we think it should be.
This is not a call for community; this is a call for us to see community differently, so we can begin to find out what kind of community we want to build. And that is a thing you can do today, if you want. I recommend doing it over a few drinks, because, well, I’m a festival promoter; I recommend doing EVERYTHING over a few drinks.
Thank you for having me here today. It’s been a pleasure and an honor. I hope you enjoy the rest of the festival!